Bramham’s Take on Canadian Poly Trial

Daphne Bramham wrote an opinion in the Vancouver Sun about how the Canadian poly trial is going so far.

Evidence so far has been overwhelming that polygamy is inherently harmful both to individuals and to society.

I haven’t been sitting in the courtroom, but that’s not the impression I’m getting. Following the coverage provided from sources such as Bramham’s paper, I have seen that some people report having had horrible experiences with certain individuals or even families. But that hardly makes the freedom to marry the persons you love harmful.

As controversial as British Columbia's key expert Joseph Henrich was with his contention that monogamy may be the underpinning of both democracy and liberalized economies, the UBC professor was largely unassailable.

Show me these strongly monogamous democracies. There are places where people can only have one spouse under the law, but it is socially accepted and practiced to have other lovers. There are married people who cheat, swing, swap, or bring in a third person on an occasional or regular basis. There are unmarried people who are having casual and not-so-casual sex with multiple people. There are people who marry and divorce multiples times. Are these societies monogamous?

Bramham rehashes other witnesses I found to be less than compelling.

Funkydory submitted multiple comments, and this is one…

When you are half way through a trial at the point where the prosecution has presented the totality of its case and evidence against the defendant, it would certainly be fair to say that the overwhelming weight of the information presented thus far leads the trier of fact to believe that the defendant is guilty. Well - NO DUHHH !!!!

Good point. And as I’ve said before, if we were to put monogamous marriage on trial, we could find witness after witness with a horror story about what a monogamous marriage did to their lives, and we could find scholars who would back them up.